This time, I was ready for the world to change. As we took off again, heading away from the north face, I tried to pay attention to the details…to the radius of Bren’s influence, which depended on where he aimed his focus and how far ahead…to the flexibility of the trees as we wove our way through glades and over small ridges…to the way jumps seemed to spring up before us whenever Bren wanted air. I never wanted air. The loss of solid ground knocked the wind out of me. It was worse, in some ways, than losing my view of reality. These seemed to be Bren’s favorite moments though, carving through the voids with perfect control, creating our future on the ground below second by second, with razor precision. He was at home in the sky.
As we left a stand of trees, a huge swell rose and once again we launched, crossing a run at an altitude that made the skiers and snowboarders cruising their way down the mountain look small. The thought turned to stone and dropped into my stomach.
“They’re going to see us,” I said, leaning back against Bren to make sure he heard me. I had lowered my voice instinctively.
His hair brushed against my face as he spoke. “They can’t.”
Impossibly, we were still in the air, the trees on the far side of the run too distant yet for me to spot our landing. I started to turn toward him and stopped when I realized how close his face was to mine. “If one of them even looks up…”
“We’re moving too fast,” he said.
At first I didn’t understand. Bren was fast. I had seen him all but leave flames in his wake. But I did see him. Everyone did. Then I remembered Frey’s run that morning…watching from the lift as he turned to a blur in my vision. I looked down. There were lots of people on the run, but they were the same people I had just seen - a man skiing behind a little boy, three teenaged girls in colorful hats with pom-poms, a guy in a blue jacket cutting a sharp turn on his board, his arm stretched out behind him. They were not moving.
“Oh God,” I said. Then I caught my breath and said it again.
“It’s okay,” Bren said in my ear. “Just physics. Everything will be in sync again when we stop.”
“When will that be?” My voice rose sharply on the last syllable as we avoided a small oak by inches and stomped down. His laugh was a whisper in my hair.
I figured we were about two-thirds of the way up the mountain, and cutting a horizontal path along the face. We had passed all the trails for the raceway and terrain parks, the trails leading to the bunny hill, and those heading down to the base lodge. Now I saw that the last of the hotel buildings and condos were streaming by in small glimpses through the trees, and knew that the bonfire site and the glades were nearly beneath us. I stiffened with the memory of the night before, though it seemed impossibly long ago now.
Bren’s arm tightened around me once again, his other hand cuffing my upper arm for a moment as he pulled me against him. “Almost there,” he said, so close that I shivered.
Once we passed all the landmarks I knew, we began to glide up the mountain at what felt like a leisurely pace and I wondered if we were still outrunning time. We wove in and out of trees and avoided rocks, firmly on the ground now despite its shifting intermittently to allow our progress. There was a stream somewhere to our right - I heard the water bubbling - and ahead, a copse of unusually tall evergreens so densely cropped that there appeared no way to get through. Naturally, this was where we were headed.
As we approached the two tallest trees directly in front of us, their bottom branches folded up, umbrella-style, and we slid through the opening. I heard rustling behind us and turned to see the boughs settling back into place. Bren kept his hold on me as we slowed to a stop, but remained silent as I gazed around.
We stood in a snow-covered clearing surrounded by looming evergreens, taller than the largest pines I had seen on the mountain. Their boughs were dusted with frost and glittered even in the ashy day. The stream I had heard ran in ahead of us - at about two o’clock - and ran out again at about five, its black water jumping over stones scattered on the bed and banks. Also on the banks, and in several places throughout the clearing, were little shrubs with tough-looking leaves, their flowers vivid colors - blue, white, yellow, violet, pink. They reminded me of the earliest spring blooms.
A little off to the left, about halfway between us and the far side, was a stone fire ring. It was roughly the size of our kitchen table in the suite and was surrounded by wooden stumps and short, thick logs that served, I guessed, as seats. A few charred bits of wood lay in the center and I assumed they had been pulled from the pile of logs stacked against the trees behind it.
Directly across from me, one tree stood out. It was a bit off line, as though it had taken a step forward, and its needles were dusted blue and shimmered like they were lit from within. I gazed up at the sky, still dim and spitting snow, then back at the tree. As I scanned its length, I noticed a snow-capped boulder behind it. It was as though a piece of the mountain had jutted out to make a small cliff, pushing the tree forward.
I let my eyes roam around the perimeter of the circle again, craning my head to see behind me and taking in the details of the stream and shrubs and snow once more. Everything had a little sparkle here - even my own breath as it escaped in a warm rush.
“Wow,” I said.
Bren smiled, gazing into my eyes for a moment, then bent and yanked us out of our bindings. I left my board behind and crept into the middle of the circle, rotating in place, my eyes lighting from sight to sight.
“This is…” I had no words.
“Ringsaker.” Bren said from behind me. “That’s what we call it. Kind of a code name.”
A code name. And then I remembered the fires I had seen in the night. Last night. I glanced down at the charred wood in the fire ring and back at Bren.
“The fires were yours.” I said.
“You knew that.” He took a few steps toward me. His expression challenged me to argue, but I just looked down at the snow. “We need somewhere to talk and check up on things.” He said. “Without being seen.”
“Check up on what?”
“Things in Asgard.” This time he looked down. He put hands on his hips and shifted his weight from one side to the other.
I watched him for a while, and then the sound of the brook caught my attention. It was an almost ordinary sound, with only the faintest bell-like trill above the chatter of the water. And it was an almost ordinary sight, with just a bit too much gleam in the small surges rushing over the stones. I walked over to the bank and dropped down on a huge rock, pulling my gloves off and stuffing them into my pockets. The stone wasn’t cold beneath me, as I had expected it to be, and I wondered if it was enchantment or shock. After a moment, Bren came and sat beside me.
“I feel like I’m in a dream,” I said, watching the swirl of a tiny whirlpool that had formed behind a stone.
“I knew you’d think I was crazy when I told you. This was the only way to make you believe me.” He looked to the pines on the far bank. “I’ve never told anyone.”
I looked up at him. “Never? Not anyone?”
“No one human.”
The way he said human turned something over inside me. I was looking at someone other than human, and I supposed that somewhere in my subconscious, I had known that from the first morning I’d seen him riding over the crest of the mountain. But now he was regarding me with the most human expression I had ever seen, soft and motionless except for the wide eyes moving over my face.
“What is it?”
He didn’t answer right away, and instead reached out and touched the back of my fingers. I flipped my hand and slid it into his.
“I wasn’t sure if you were…you know…going to want to deal with this.” He said.
I thought about that. I didn’t know what being a god meant, in physical terms, or in any terms, but the warmth of his skin against mine, the amber gleam in his eyes, the way tufts of his hair shifted in the breeze still stopped
my breath. When he saw this, he smiled an awkward half-smile I hadn’t seen before - his usual arrogance mixed with relief - and I knew I didn’t feel any differently. Not about him.
He squeezed my hand and I felt the hard press of his ring against my fingers. I stared down at it.
“So, what are these rings all about?”
He watched me run my thumb over the metal. It was as warm as his hand.
“Val forged them from Asgardian silver, right before we left. Since we’re not as strong on Earth as we are there, we have to stay together to keep from being hauled back. We swore an oath on them here at Ringsaker when we arrived. We do it everywhere we go. It’s a sort of a pact that binds us. Allows us to use the rings to communicate when we’re not in direct contact.”
“Communicate how?” I imagined some holographic Skype session.
He sighed. “The best I can explain it is that it’s like vibrations…like energy. In my head I can see images of where someone is and what they’re trying to show me.”
“Hmm.” I tried to absorb that, letting my thumbnail fall into the tiny break in the silver. “Why this little gap here?”
“It’s sort of symbolic,” he said, but he didn’t explain. Instead, he looked at me as though I would come to the answer on my own. I pictured the ring with its tiny gap. A circle with a rift…a break.
“The break in the cycle.” I said.
He nodded. “Ragnarok.”
I paused to think again. “You said Skye is a free spirit. This is how you know what she’s up to?” I tapped his ring.
He nodded again. I spun the ring on his finger until it looked whole.
“Is this how you found out what happened with Tyler?” I asked.
He looked at me for a long time, but didn’t answer.
“Did you see what Skye saw?” I asked. His jaw tightened. I drew into my jacket and looked away, but when I began to pull my hand back, he tightened his grip. I remembered the sight of Tyler on crutches with the reddish-blue gash in his cheek. His father screaming at my mother and Mr. Neil.
“You know, it wasn’t exactly fair.” I met his gaze again.
“What?”
“What you did to Tyler. I mean, did you really need a bunch of…you… to beat up one kid? Doesn’t that seem a little…I don’t know…bullyish?”
“What he did to you was bullyish.”
He was right, but it seemed different in some way I was struggling to voice.
“He got off easy.” He said.
"Yeah, I guess you guys could’ve killed him if you’d wanted to. Really, he should be grateful he was only pushed down into the ravine and mauled.”
Bren laughed his deep laugh and I shrank at the coldness of it. “Even if he deserved it,” I said, “I’m not sure it’s that funny.”
“No,” he said, “Nothing about Tyler is funny. But you know what is? Frieda actually saved him - all of us, really.”
“Frieda?” I pushed back a long strand of hair that had blown across my face and stared at him. “How?”
“It’s true that we went after him." He glanced at the water to avoid my gaze. “The four of us. We chased him down the raceway.”
“At normal speed?” I cut in, a sprinkle of sarcasm in my words.
He nodded. “I wanted him to see me coming.”
This gave me a chill, but I kept quiet and waited.
“So he saw us, and he kept looking back. Probably trying to figure out what we were doing on the raceway. When he realized we were there for him, he tried to outrun us and he got sloppy. I was still a few feet away from him when he went off the side and rolled down into the ravine.”
“He fell?” I said, leaning toward him. “He said you pushed him.”
“Of course he did.” He glanced up at me. “Anyway, I took my board off and went down the bank after him.” He shook his head and paused for a moment. “I’m not going to lie to you, I had every intention of...” but he caught me watching his face, cringing, and spared me. I was instantly aware of our intertwined fingers. Strange to hold his hand while he was talking about this.
“At first, when he looked up at me, he was scared,” he continued, "but before I could decide whether or not I cared, he changed. He pointed at me and he said, ‘I didn’t touch her.’”
“But he didn’t know you and I knew each other.” I said. “Not until this morning.”
Bren nodded, and I realized that Tyler had just assumed that they were there because of me. He knew what he had done, and it seemed he was used to defending it.
“So what happened?” I asked.
“So, his skis were in the ravine, and he was hauling himself up off the ground, trying to stare me down, but I was coming at him pretty fast. Then his face dropped.” Now he smiled a little. “And I see this blur fly past me, and in the next second Frieda throws a right hook and he goes back down. Hard.”
“What? Frieda did this?” I stared.
He nodded. “So she’s standing there glaring down at him and he’s completely stunned, trying to get back on his feet…and I just stopped dead in my tracks. I didn’t know what to do.” His smile was brighter now as he ran his hand over the top of his head. “So Tyler gets up, and he looks at me - doesn’t even glance at Frieda - and he says, ‘so you let the girls do your fighting for you?' And I start to walk toward him again, and he realizes he has no choice but to fight. I can see it in his face. So without even looking at her, he says to Frieda, ‘move, bitch.’ ”
I sucked in a breath and he laughed. “Yeah, that was the wrong thing to say to Frieda. She kicked him.”
I threw him a puzzled expression. “Kicked him?” I pictured a little girl kicking a man in the shin.
“No. Kicked him.” He said.
I stared at him for a moment longer and then got it. “Oh,” I said, wincing. “Well. If there was ever a reason for that...”
“Nah, it’s not her style. She did it to get me out of trouble.”
I thought about how that would work, about the difference between what she did to Tyler and what Bren had planned.
“She knew you wouldn’t go after him when he was down like that.” I guessed.
“Not like that. It wouldn’t have been…honorable.” I loved the way he said the word, or maybe just that he had said it at all. “She knew if I’d gotten hold of Tyler, we would’ve been thrown out of here and who knows what else. So by doing what she did, she shut us down. She also figured Tyler wouldn’t tell his dad he was attacked by a girl.”
“But he lied.”
“Yeah.” He waved a dismissive hand. “But if they asked us about it, Frieda would’ve told them everything and he would have looked like an idiot.”
I imagined Frieda outrunning Bren just to get to Tyler, and laughed. “Why didn’t you just tell me the truth at your place?”
He scratched at his forehead and gave me a flat, apologetic smile. “Frieda doesn’t really have any girlfriends. Skye isn’t exactly - you know - the tea and shopping type. Frieda likes you. She was afraid you’d be mad at her for getting involved at all. So when you came in yelling at me and I saw her face, I couldn’t rat her out. I figured it didn’t matter anyway since I started the whole thing.”
Poor Frieda, sitting there with tears in her eyes while I refused to even look at her. "So Skye wasn’t involved in any of it.”
He shook his head.
“She still shouldn’t have gotten you involved in the first place.”
“I would’ve killed her if she didn’t.” He said. And then another thought occurred to me.
“Who is she?”
“What?” His eyes flicked to mine, his brow creased.
“When you told me about the gods, you mentioned Frey and Frieda, Val and Dag. So who is Skye?”
He smiled. “Skadi. She’s known as the Goddess of the hunt. Of winter and the mountains. You heard us say that she can make people forget.
But it’s not a threat like you said. We all have certain talents, just like people. Skye can affect thoughts and memory.”
“That’s scary.”
He laughed. “She doesn’t use it for anything bad.”
I watched the river flow and lather around the slick stones, smelled the crisp tang of the water. I knew the air was cold but didn’t feel it next to Bren, here in his magic circle, even with the heavy snow blowing around us. I tried to savor the peace of it all, to take a long breath and clear my head, but my thoughts crowded in.
“Bren?” I said into the silence. My voice sounded strange to my own ears.
“Hmm?”
“Who are you?” I realized I had been avoiding the question as soon as I asked it. “You didn’t mention it on the bridge.”
He was quiet for a few seconds, then he said, “I did.”
“I don’t remember.”
“I told you. I came here with them to keep them from being taken back.”
His eyes were closed now, his chest rising with his breath.
I thought back. “You’re. Him. What was his name?” I tried to keep my hand from trembling against his.
“Ullur.” He exhaled the word. “People here call me the god of snow.” He opened his eyes and stared into the trees. “But it’s a little more complicated than that.”
“Why didn’t you tell me before?”
“I don’t know,” he said quietly. “It was easier for me to tell you about them. I haven’t had to think about it for a long time. Not since we got here.”
I steeled myself for another blow. “When was that?”
“1850s. Not here at Yew Dales,” he gestured vaguely behind us. “We’ve moved around a lot.”
1850s. The words wouldn’t sink in, just bounced off me. Bren’s shoulders were tense, as if he was waiting for this to finally break me. I took advantage of my numbness to ease his mind. “It doesn’t really matter, does it?” I said. “From what you told me, you’re older than dirt anyway.”
He relaxed a little. “I said I was older than time, not dirt.”
“Right, sorry.” I smiled, pretended I was over it and changed the subject. “So why is your name here so different than what it was there? Ullur?”
He shrugged. “Don’t you ever get tired of the same thing, over and over again?”
I nodded. That feeling was as comfortable as my oldest pair of ripped sweats.
“Well imagine what it was like for me after all that time. Power or no power, it gets old and tired, and you get sick of yourself. I wanted to be different in this form. I like humans.” The way he said ‘humans’ still gave me a jolt. “I love how they change, how creative they are, how they’re always fighting the impossible. It’s like they have this unlimited supply of hope.” He looked up at the sky. “It’s not like that in Asgard. I guess I chose a name that sounded different because I didn’t want to remember my past every time someone spoke to me.”
“Why Bren?” I watched a snowflake land on his eyelashes.
“Frieda picked it. It’s a shortened form of an old Norse word. It means burning.”
I thought again of the first day I had seen him. “Because of your hair.”
He lowered his gaze to mine. His smile faded and his eyes held mine for so long that I almost forgot my last words. “She says it’s because of my temper."
He let go of my hand, reached up and pushed a strand of my hair behind my ear. “You don’t say much, Jenna.” As he let his hand rest against the side of my neck, I suppressed a shiver. “It’s hard to know how you feel.”
I couldn’t imagine how he could have missed the way I looked at him, already a habit because the rush of it set off some crazy adrenaline flood that muted the warning underneath…couldn’t understand how he had managed to ignore the way I struggled for breath whenever he smiled at me. And how could he not feel the goose bumps that had risen just now where he pressed his fingers into my skin?
“You don’t say much either,” I told him, not knowing whether I was buying time or fishing.
“I’ve just given you my whole world.” He let his head fall to the side as he looked into my eyes. “Don’t you think you could trust me a little?”
“What do you want me to say?” The truth was, I didn’t know if I could trust anybody. It had been a while since I’d tried.
“I want you to say, ‘Bren, I don’t care about any of this god stuff. I want to be with you.' ” He waited, his shoulders once again stiff with tension.
“Bren,” I said. “I’m totally freaked out by all this god stuff.” His shoulders dropped, but I continued. “But I really want to be with you.” I let all of my feelings loose for just a moment in these last words, and they sounded like they came from the bottom of a well.
He took my hand again.
We talked until the ashy day closed its eyes, the flakes now stark and ghostly against the twilight. Bren asked me about my new life at Little Woods High, and though I couldn’t imagine why such small, ordinary things could be of interest to him, it felt good to talk without a filter on my words. I asked him about Ringsaker, why it glittered the way it did, and he told me that once the oath was sworn on the rings, it became a place of solace and protection, a place where they could speak to those in Asgard, gods they’d had a connection with there. For Bren, this meant he could talk to his mother, Sif, who kept them apprised of the events in Asgard, and warned them of any plans to try to bring them back. The gods couldn’t take Bren alone because he was too strong, even here, but if they took one of the others, the oath would be broken, and the rest of them would be left without the protection of the group. Bren was the strongest link, but they needed every link to hold their position. I didn’t want to think about what would happen if something went wrong, so I asked him about the earthquakes instead.
“It’s probably nothing,” he said as the stream began to glisten under the rising moon. “It’s not unusual for quakes to happen one after another. But sometimes earthquakes here on Earth are a sign that something’s happening back home, so we always check in.”
“What could be happening there?” I wrapped my arms around my knees against a chilly breeze. Across the brook, the pines leaned and whispered to each other, the moon caught low in their boughs.
Bren’s gaze turned inward as he thought. “Could be anything, but the quakes are getting closer to us. It’s probably just coincidence, but Frey and Frieda want to be sure.”
“Why Frey and Frieda?”
“They’re best with the elements. Weather, geology, earth stuff.”
“They really are twins?”
He nodded.
“So there are families in Asgard. Gods get married, have kids. Like it is here.”
“Not exactly,” he said. “Nothing changes there. Everything happens the same way over and over. The future is set. There’s nothing new, no challenges. Can you imagine living like that?” He was still looking into the water, the moonlight scribbling over the ripples.
“It doesn’t really sound like living.” I said.
“That’s my point.” He looked up at me. “You know, I watched you on that deck so many times, watching the skiers and riders on the mountain. I could feel how much you wanted it. I saw it in your face, in the way you stood. Everything about you was just poised on the brink. And what I kept thinking was, ‘all she has to do is decide, and then everything will change. Everything in her world will change.’ ” He sat back a little, picked up a pebble by his feet and tossed it into the stream. “That could never happen where I’m from.”
I wondered if he knew that he had caused me to want like that, to watch the mountain the way I did, day after day, hoping to see him there. To finally go out into the freezing cold night, buckle into a board, and throw myself down the hill.
He watched me, silver light in his eyes.
“I never would have done it if you hadn’t been there,
” I told him.
As he stared, I felt tension rising in my body, like that in the quiet space between the colorful burst of a firework and its deafening boom. Bren reached up and touched the side of my face, ran his thumb over my mouth. When I froze, he leaned over and kissed me. He gave me no time to be afraid, as I thought I would be, wondering if things would be awkward, or if I would be too clueless and amateur for him to feel anything. He just touched his lips to mine, pressed his hand against the small of my back, and pulled me close to him. Then he kissed me again and lingered, waiting.
Every muscle in my body trembled. I was scared that it would end, scared that I might forget even one detail later, when I was home without him and needing to recreate the feel of him in my mind. I let the smell of pine and the sharpness of the cold burn my nose, reached up and caught the smooth, soft tufts of his hair between my fingers, focused on the feel of the strands against my skin. He tasted like his scent – wintergreen – and I ran my tongue over his lower lip, slowly, desperate to trap the sensation. He sighed in a hard, fast rush and cinched his arm around my waist.
I was losing control of my body, the feeling electric and draining all at once. I grabbed his shoulders, meaning to push myself away to take a breath, but then I felt the warm strength of him beneath my hands, felt him tug me even closer, and for one moment I thought I’d do anything to keep this. And this was the thought that scared me enough to pull away.
I kept my eyes closed, breathing hard as I listened to him gain control of his own breath. Then I looked up at him. His expression was all concern - not what I expected.
“I’m sorry,” he said, his arms loosening around me.
I searched his face. “What? Why?”
“I should never have done that after what happened to you last night.” He shook his head. “I wasn’t thinking.”
I let my gaze trail off. It was hard to believe that it had been just last night when Tyler and I had been in the woods near here, sitting on a rock very similar to this one.
“It's okay,” I said. He shook his head again, and I knew it would do no good to try to tell him how different it was. So I said, “Please don’t let him ruin this.”
I watched him, waiting to see if it had worked. After a moment, he grinned.
The ride back to the base was a little more peaceful than the one we had taken to Ringsaker. The trees still bowed to Bren’s wishes, and the hills still arched and rolled under his silent command, but he seemed content to coast along under the moon, his arm around my waist as I leaned back against him, his head close to mine. We passed the main lift and glided to a stop, then unzipped our jackets and carried our boards the rest of the way to the hotel.
Once we had secured our boards in a nearby rack, I took off my gloves, walked over to the base of the deck and leaned against it, exhausted. Bren stepped in front of me, his stance wide to allow space for my legs.
“Is your mom going to be mad that you were gone so long?” He asked.
“I don’t know."
“With me?” He added.
“She doesn’t know you,” I said.
“I don’t think knowing me would help.” He brushed a snowflake from my eyebrow.
“That’s not what I meant. She doesn’t know you. Who you are, not what you are.”
He pressed a hand against the deck on either side of me and looked into my eyes. “I’m afraid you’re going to go inside, fall asleep and wake up wishing this whole thing never happened. Hoping it was a nightmare.”
My laugh was airy and full of nerves. “I’m afraid I’m going to wake up and realize it was just a dream.”
He stared, then leaned in close and kissed me. “Jenna,” he said against my lips. He pulled away just enough to look at me, a new reluctance in his voice. "I don’t think I’ll see you tomorrow.”
It was just a few words, but it knocked the wind out of me a little. I closed my eyes, tried to hide my reaction.
His laugh was edgy. “Please say that’s disappointment and not relief.”
“I’m beyond disappointed,” I said too casually. “Why won’t I see you?”
“We’re going up to talk to my mother, see if these quakes are anything to worry about. I never know how long it will take to contact her, or when she’ll come. We have to stay until she does.”
“Do you have to spend all night there?”
“Possibly. She has to be careful about communicating with us. In Asgard, we’re no better than criminals.” He pressed his forehead against mine.
I knew it was late, that my mother was probably wondering where I was. I also knew that I had to go in sometime, to go upstairs and get ready for bed and let this day and night with Bren become a memory. I thought about spending Sunday, the saddest day of the week, missing him.
“If I don’t see you tomorrow…” I said, distracted as I ran my hands up over his chest, his cotton t-shirt a soft contrast against the muscle underneath.
“What?” He looked down at my hands, then glanced back up at me.
“I’ll watch for the fire. At least I’ll know you’re there.”
“It’s funny you saw it in the first place,” he said.
“Why?”
“No one ever does.”
“Why not?”
His head fell to the side. “I don’t know. I guess people see what they want to see.”
“Well,” I said, letting my hands slip around to his back as he took a step closer, “maybe I was looking for you.”
We stood there for a long time, oblivious to the guests and staff around us as they lined up at the lifts and traipsed up and down the stairs to the deck. Bren held me, his face buried in my hair while I listened to his heartbeat. When he finally let me go, it was bittersweet, because although I wouldn’t see him for a while, we were together.
Chapter 16